On any given day, the “People’s House” — Vermont’s Statehouse – can accommodate hordes of lawmakers, schoolchildren, activists, business people, farmers, lobbyists, journalists, tourists and constituents.
Vermonters can walk into most rooms in the building without hesitation. Committee rooms are often packed to the gunnels, particularly when word about hot legislation spreads. Groups of high school basketball teams, Vermont National Guard members, Boy Scouts and other honorees often occupy the balcony when the House is in session to receive commendations from lawmakers. On a particularly difficult day during the session last year, for example, anti-Vermont Yankee activists and several busloads of schoolchildren descended simultaneously, making the downstairs lobby in the 19th century Greek Revival building nearly impassable.
The Statehouse is, in short, a very busy place, and the Sergeant of Arms’ office is at the ready, maintaining order and shepherding the people who visit or work in Vermont’s most famous living museum space, particularly the House and Senate Chambers.
Last week, however, during the inauguration ceremony for Gov. Peter Shumlin, the Statehouse staff didn’t have much of a role to play. Instead, Paul Tencher, executive director of the inaugural committee, was running the show, and he and a team of familiars vetted everyone who tried to enter the House Chamber. For the first time, members of the Statehouse press corps, many of whom have worked in the building for decades, had to obtain credentials.
As for members of the general public, if you weren’t on a typed list held by inaugural committee assistants who served as gatekeepers to the chamber — you didn’t get in.
That’s because the balcony and gallery seats, typically made available to anyone who isn’t a lawmaker, were reserved for affiliates of the governor — friends, family, donors and administration officials.
The inaugural committee had originally proposed requiring that attendees obtain free tickets for the event. That idea was nixed by lawmakers and others, though the Celebrate Vermont web site still suggested tickets were required and linked to a contact form interested parties were asked to fill out.
For the Shumlin inaugural, people who sat in seats an hour and a half before the ceremony were asked to leave; many more were turned away.
Although it’s not uncommon for the balcony to be partially reserved for VIPs during an inauguration, a former Douglas administration official said at least some seats in the downstairs gallery were typically made available for the general public in previous inaugurations.
For the Shumlin inaugural, however, people who sat in seats an hour and a half before the ceremony were asked to leave; many more were turned away, according to a half-dozen sources who were there at the time, none of whom wished to be identified. Tencher, who previously served as the manager of the Democratic coordinated campaign and campaign manager for Deb Markowitz, didn’t return phone calls requesting comment.
There were overflow spaces in Room 10 where people could watch the ceremony on a television feed, though many viewers complained that there were technical problems.
Alex MacLean, the governor’s secretary of civil and military affairs, said the House Chamber, which maxes out at around 500 occupants, couldn’t accommodate all of the people who wanted to attend the event. MacLean wasn’t directly involved in planning the ceremony.
She said cabinet members were seated in the balcony and family and longtime supporters in the gallery. “There was an incredibly high demand for the event, which is why we went to the list system in the first place,” MacLean said.
“We were conscious that the fire marshal said there could only be so many people in the House, and the governor wanted to make sure certain family members, supporters and administration officials weren’t excluded,” MacLean said. “It wasn’t that we were giving preference to some people over others.”
The balcony, which was reserved for the cabinet, she said, was full by the time she arrived. “I almost didn’t get a seat,” MacLean said.
The list of VIPs was not made available before press time.
Senate leaders rap rulers
Senate President Pro Tem John Campbell ended the first week of the legislative session with a rearrangement of the chairs and a message to senators: If you want to stay out of the principal’s office, attend meetings like you’re supposed to.
Campbell and the Committee on Committees – namely Lt. Gov. Phil Scott and Dick Mazza, in addition to Campbell – took their time selecting the committee members (the announcement wasn’t made until Friday), and they did so carefully, given the profound change in the makeup of the Senate this biennium. The body lost a number of powerful senators last year – including Sens. Peter Shumlin, Doug Racine, Scott himself and Susan Bartlett. The replacement recruits are experienced, confident and, as some observers have suggested, possibly hard to handle.
“You never leave these things thinking you got everything you wanted, but I don’t think there’s a bad committee in the Senate,” Mazza said.
The six new senators of the 30-member body include a set of high-powered pols who are expected to waste no time diving into policy: Sally Fox, D-Chittenden, former majority whip of the House; Richard Westman, former commissioner of taxes under the Douglas administration; Peter Galbraith, former U.S. diplomat; Anthony Pollina, a perennial Progressive candidate for governor; Philip Baruth, a well-known author, professor and blogger; Joe Benning, a trial attorney and former chair of the Vermont Human Rights Commission.
“It’s a very talented group of folks coming in,” Campbell said in an interview. “Every one of them has shown that they have reached the pinnacle of their own professions.”
Campbell said he wants to take advantage of senators’ specialties, though seniority was also a factor.
Sen. Bobby Starr, D-Essex-Orleans, who was in the House for 25 years, served as chair of the Education Committee in the last biennium. He was moved to the rank and file of the powerful Appropriations Committee this time. Starr said he wasn’t bothered by the change.
“You never leave these things thinking you got everything you wanted, but I don’t think there’s a bad committee in the Senate,” Mazza said.
As for decorum, Mazza, Campbell and Scott agreed that the Senate must be more disciplined about attendance. From now on committee clerks will take note of absences, and chairs must be notified if senators have to leave.
Campbell told the nine Senate committee chairs last Friday that attendance is more than a matter of respecting protocol. “If people aren’t there to participate in discussion, it’s going to be dysfunctional,” Campbell said to the group assembled in Lt. Gov. Scott’s office. “As president pro tem, I don’t want to walk into dysfunctional committees. You’re pros. You can handle this.”
Lawmakers get green rooms
If the House Corrections and Institutions Committee members are walking with a spring in their step these days, it might have something to do with their new digs: Their committee room has been transformed from a small, cluttered space of ill-fitting filing cabinets, desks, bookshelves and folding chairs into an elegant, boardroom-style office with a suspended period tin ceiling.
The room may feel slightly larger, too, because the door now swings outward, into the hallway, and most of the furniture is built in. Instead of 1970s vintage folding chairs for guests, benches line the Merritt Apple green walls. A slightly narrower table in the center of the room features hidden electrical wiring and cable. Wood blinds match the woodwork.
But if Corrections and Institutions, one of the smaller rooms on the first floor of the first addition to the Statehouse, now seems to hearken back to an earlier era, say the early 19th century, the technology now available in the space is cutting edge. A new $9,000 presentation screen is positioned on one wall, and it’s designed to hook up to a laptop. The idea is that lawmakers can more easily examine information together – Excel spreadsheets, Powerpoint presentations, Autocad drawings and the like.
Tricia Harper, project managing architect for Buildings and General Services, worked hard to free up space in the tight room, which must accommodate 11 lawmakers and a half-dozen observers at any given time.
Harper literally shaved off inches here and there, cutting the edge off of the conference table, for example, and making the benches as narrow as possible. (They are 14 inches deep, just like the benches in the House gallery, Harper says.)
“It’s fun to make the room stretch,” Harper said.
The price tag? $60,000. The upstairs House conference room was also given a makeover (new paint job and built-in look) for $40,000, and a second presentation screen ($9,000) was installed in the House Government Operations Committee, in anticipation of reapportionment presentations.
The House rooms haven’t been refurbished since the 1970s; and given the state’s budget difficulties, it could be a few more years yet before the remaining dozen or so committee rooms see a coat of Merritt Apple paint.
The Senate committee rooms were renovated in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
